Crazy, a Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness, by Pete Earley

June 08 2006 (23:19:00) ( 0 views )

I've been putting off writing about this book because it's so very difficult to even think about its topic, and even more to write about it.

It is difficult to find words to adequately disparage the state of mental "healthcare" in this nation. If you doubt that there's a problem, I invite you to any large city. Walk around and ask why there are homeless people on the streets. Speak to any police officer, anyone who works in a hospital, jail or prison. Ask her or him if they have problems dealing with the mentally ill.

Pete Earley is an accomplished investigative journalist and writer whose life has been touched intimately by mental illness. His son suffers from bipolar disorder. Early's experiences trying to get help for his son inspired him to investigate the treatment of people with mental illness in this country. He did a thorough job, and the result is mostly disturbing.

One of the most frustrating aspects of having a loved one with such a disorder is that no matter how obvious or egregious their behavior and delusions may be, there is no good way to get them into treatment if they resist. And it is not unusual for a person with delusions, paranoia, mania, or depression to resist treatment. Indeed, many who suffer with these diseases feel that there is nothing wrong with them. It's the old joke, "I'm right, and the world's wrong." Furthermore, the effectiveness of treatment is inconsistent and undependable, which has led some patients to conclude that they are better off avoiding the "system" entirely.

Early's research includes a brief history of the last few decades during which we have seen the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, and its consequences.

"Tragically, deinstitutionalization [was a ] disaster. ...patients were discharged without any effort.. to link them to ... services -- if, in fact, there were any. President Kennedy's promise of $3 billion to create a safety net turned out to be a cruel lie... Congress never got around to financing community health centers.

"Chronically mentally ill patients -- psychotic and bewildered -- began appearing on street corners..."

The book is a very well written, unsettling chronicle of what we have done and not done about the people among us who suffer from disorders of the brain. Earley touches upon the many inadequacies of the legal system, the general ineffectiveness of the "healthcare" system, and the incredible apathy that this nation exhibits toward this entire subject.

We may look the other way, or cross the street, to avoid a deluded person wandering by, talking to voices we can't hear. We may think that it is a problem that "other people" have. But every one of us is touched by this in some way. The sheer numbers of mentally ill people around us -- both diagnosed and undiagnosed -- should be enough to make this a certainty. But -- as Earley reminds us -- what exactly makes any of us "sane" people immune? Who can say that he or she will never suffer from a mental illness? And if that happens, how then will we feel about this problem?

It is easy for me to see how important it is that we address the plight of the mentally ill in a meaningful way, since I have people close to me who suffer. I see the inadequacy of care, and the lack of understanding in society. I work for an organization that provides behavioral healthcare, and see the immense resistance it encounters while trying to do its work. As a nation, as a state, we are not willing to pay to take care of these people -- instead we pay billions to deal with the consequences.

We cannot afford to be complacent -- anyone may be the next person to be touched by mental illness, and may become woefully aware of the awful mess we have created.

I urge you to read this very interesting book, no matter what you think your level of involvement is. Whether we look at the question from a spiritual or pragmatic viewpoint, we are "our brother's keepers."

Here is a terrific review of the book at Blogcritics.org.

Searching for the Sound, My Life With the Grateful Dead, by Phil Lesh

June 28 2006 (22:01:00) ( 0 views )

In the attics of my life I remember buying a Grateful Dead LP that had, among other things, "The Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion," "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl," "Cream Puff War," "Viola Lee Blues," and a picture of Jerry Garcia wearing an Uncle Sam stars-and-stripes tophat on the cover -- oh wow... I was in love and it never ended. On through the years. I'm no Dead expert, and the 'net abounds with such, but I had the Skull and Roses, Workingman's Dead, American Beauty, Europe '72, Wake of the Flood, and Go to Heaven. I've been to a few GD concerts, although it's a long long time ago.

Sometime in the early 1990s I was driving through Seattle on my way home from a day on the road as a sales rep. I was wearing wool slacks, a dress shirt, maybe a tie, shiny shoes, the whole salesman outfit. I had samples, catalogs, order forms, paperwork and a cellular phone. I don't remember why but I went past the Seattle Center. I was only dimly aware that the Dead were in town doing a concert, and at that point in my life had little interest in going to such an event. With age my tolerance for crowds and random noise has really deteriorated.

I drove past sidewalks loaded with young and old people dressed in tie-dye and denim. Many hundreds of them. Long hair, headbands, suede vests. Girls in long cotton dresses twirling, crazy hippies with hand drums. Sandals, incense, and what's that smell? I had the strangest feeling of being thrown back into 1967. Dead Heads were everywhere. There were people there younger than me that looked like I looked when I was their age. And I'm sure if any of them looked at me in my air-conditioned car and Establishment uniform they thought the kind of thoughts that I would have thought back in the Summer of Love. It was a funny feeling.

And then not long afterward, again as I drove along on a business mission of some sort, came the sad news of Jerry Garcia's death. Now, I know that that was 9 August 1995, as it was very easy to Google. (When exactly that concert was is not so easy, but there are those of you out there who will look it up.) And it really, really hit me. It was physical.

I am not one to be involved with celebrities, but this was Jerry, and it was different. I loved the sound of his guitar, I loved his voice, and I loved the Grateful Dead. Sure, my love had taken a back seat as I became preoccupied in the rush of "adult" life and "important things." But it was still there, and I knew it was there when I heard that Jerry was gone. My sadness surprised me, and as I listened to the obligatory tribute plays of his songs on the radio I couldn't stop the tears. There I was, a middle-aged fat salesman peddling automotive products on the Freeway, crying for one of my rock 'n roll heroes.

Phil Lesh has written a 333 page book chronicling his time with the Dead, which is pretty much the whole life of the band. Phil joined Jerry, Pigpen, Bob Weir, and Billy Kreutzmann way back in the time of Haight Ashbury to form what became arguably the most innovative, quirky, loved, improvisational rock 'n roll band in the electric music movement of the late 20th century.

Lesh tells us of the early days of crazy camraderie, travels with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and the early involvement of Owsley as their sound technician. He takes us throught the whole story, through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. "What a long, strange, trip it's been."

His writing is only a little bit self-conscious. Phil is obviously a nice guy that I'd enjoy knowing and he's a fabulously good musician. The fact that he produced this book and that it is, after all, very readable and thoroughly enjoyable, is quite an accomplishment. And it's just un-polished enough to make me doubt that a "ghost" writer was involved.

The edition of the book that I read was a Back Bay Books paperback, and it includes two photo sections, which are delightful.

If you have enjoyed the Grateful Dead and have any curiosity about them, I'd strongly recommend you find a copy of this book. I found it to be a very pleasant nostalgic side-trip for a 54-year-old hippie with nearly no hair.

Until I Find You, by John Irving

May 09 2006 (05:27:00) ( 0 views )

I don't want to start another post with " is one of my favorite writers," but it's hard not to do that with John Irving. I'm not sure where my admiration of him began. It may have been with The World According to Garp, published in 1978. Until I Find You, the subject of this entry, was published just last year, in 2005.

The novel is the story of young Jack Burns, his mother, father, and the many other people close to him in his life from infancy to adulthood. Jack's life begins in 1965, and moves into the present. He is the son of Alice, a tattoo artist, and William, an organist with music tattooed on nearly every square inch of his skin. William and Alice separate while Jack is very small, and the novel begins with Jack and his mother travelling from Canada to Europe in search of his father.

In 1969 "...his mother was full of surprises...Alice...would work her way through Northern Europe in search of Jack's runaway Dad...they would hunt him down and confront him with his abandoned responsibilities." William Burns' "abandoned responsibilities" become an important theme in the book.

After the epic journey to Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Finland (and I may have left out a country or two) Jack and his mother return to Toronto, very much without his father, and he begins to attend St. Hilda's school. St. Hilda's is a girl's school which, just that year, has begun to admit little boys. Thus begins Jack's many encounters with older girls and women. Some, such as Caroline Wurtz and Emma Oastler, become lifelong friends. And others, pointedly one Mrs. Machado, victimize this too-young good-looking boy, taking advantage of his precocious sexuality long before he can even begin to understand what's happening.

There is a lot of sex in this book, but it is not a sexy book.

If anything, it is a melancholy book, a meditation on so many of life's cruel tricks -- not the least of which is the elusive nature of happiness itself, even when one has everything for which one could ever hope.

Yes, there is wrestling. Jack (and his friend Emma, for that matter) becomes a wrestler, a lightweight. For the rest of his life (the part that is revealed to us, anyway) he eats little, always conscious of his weight.

I don't recall any bears. But certainly there is some Vienna? Well, there's Switzerland, anyway.

And tattoos. The world of tattoos, tattoo artists, people who are addicted to getting tattoos. If you don't know what "flash" is (I didn't), you'll figure it out from the context. You'll find out what a "scratcher" is.

Jack's career as a movie actor is fascinating, and ironically appropriate. Jack's mother predicted that he would be an actor, and he is. As a fictional American film star, he is cleverly interwoven with some very real people, personalities, and events. It is believable and unbelievable at the same time.

One of the many reasons that I will not be a great writer of fiction is that I lack subtlety. John Irving does not. As in a great drawing, the empty space is as important as the lines and shapes. The nuance, the pause between words, the choice of one word rather than another -- all this is the mark of a master. Irving makes his character an actor for many reasons best known to him, but it doesn't matter -- he is an actor, I believe it, and the story is best told this way.

I have been looking around for a passage to quote to somehow capture what I am claiming. Maybe this does it:

"Every young actor imagines there is a special part -- a groove in which he or she is a perfect fit. Well--Jack's advice to young actors would be: Hope you never get the perfect part..."

The entire fifth part of the book is entitled "Dr. Garcia," Jack Burns's psychiatrist in this last part of the story. Jack has, no great surprise, been deeply scarred (tattooed?) by his young life. His mother's singular personality, his father's absence, sexual abuse from the older women, loss and grief have all loosened him from the anchor which is sanity. In this last part, Jack strives to really find out who his father is, and was, and what really happened to him in 1969, at the age of four.

The true nature of Jack's mother and father are, of course, surprises that must not be revealed until you read this very well written work.

Don't rest until you find Until I Find You.

Pope Joan, by Donna Woolfolk Cross

April 09 2006 (04:47:00) ( 0 views )

I have a poor grasp of history. It was too much for my attention span when the overworked and underpaid employees of my high school were trying their best to educate me. So it's been a pleasure, and an eye-opening experience as well, to have read a few "historical novels." Neal Stephenson of course comes to mind, although I'm sure many will argue that his genre is more in the realm of historical fantasy I have definitely picked up more accurate history and curiosity about it from his novels than any other source I can recall today. (In youth, a short attention span. In my later years, a poor memory. Hmm.)

Pope Joan is the account of the possible but unconfirmed rise to the Vatican throne of a girl, Joan Anglicus, in the 9th century. Whether or not the story is true, it's a great story, and a great job of painting the picture of what life may have been like in Europe 1200 years ago.

Joan is Joan Anglicus, born to a Frankish priest and his wife, a Saxon captured by the Christian soldiers of the Emperor Karolus. Joan's mother Gudrun is never completely converted to Christianity (small wonder, that conversion by the sword could cause superficiality) and teaches her daughter about the Norse religion and mythology and Saxon language -- although this must be done strictly in secret, for if the canon -- her father, a relentless and cruel religious tyrant -- discovered it, there would be literal Hell to pay.

Joan's life is hard, and her status as a woman is that of a subhuman being. In spite of her circumstances, she is obviously very brilliant and cannot be kept from learning to read and write, and from studying what paltry crumbs of knowledge in the form of books that come her way. She does encounter some wise and kind men who help her to learn and grow intellectually.

When her brother is killed in a Viking massacre, Joan assumes his identity and begins her life as a monk, passing for a man for the rest of her life.

The story of how she goes from the monastery to Rome, and into the Vatican is a well-told tale of intrigue, perseverance, and the triumph of an indomitable spirit. It is humbling to imagine how people lived in 842 with misery and hardship, living only half our normal modern life-span. Disease, cruelty, poverty, and war made it very unusual for people to live long lives in this time.

Although the setting is so very far in the past, the message is clear: many great minds and potential great leaders have been discarded by our culture because of their gender. Women then were no more than property, like animals or slaves. To have been a gifted intelligent female in these years would have been a horrible curse -- indeed, there is no doubt that many such were burned at the stake as punishment for being witches.

Pope Joan is an uplifting tale, a painless history lesson, and a very good read. I would recommend it to anyone.

The Smoke Room, by Earl Emerson

March 30 2006 (06:27:00) ( 0 views )

Jason Gum is a young Seattle firefighter, the narrator of this novel. He begins: "Experts estimated the pig fell just over 11,000 feet before it plunged through Iola Pederson's roof." Now, that's how to get your audience's attention -- the first words on page one.

Earl Emerson has become a skillful writer of mystery and suspense. I've enjoyed reading his work, and I think I've missed few of his novels over the years. I especially enjoyed the Mac Fontana books. The last few of his novels have dealt with the environment he knows from personal experience: the city of Seattle and its Fire Department. Emerson is a lieutenant in that organization, so he knows what he's writing about. My paltry experience as a volunteer gives me enough basic firefighting knowledge to be able to nod my head at the accuracy of what he describes, including the powerful and not always pleasant personalities.

The Smoke Room is a novel about Gum's misadventures and involvement in the less-than-savory actions of two fellow firefighters. Gum's steamy involvement with an older woman that commences from the unlikely falling pig incident on page one causes -- through a series of circumstances -- him to be implicated in what could be the theft of a fortune in bearer bonds. Add to this complicated mess the fact that his mother is terminally ill, and Jason's life just starts falling apart, the way the first few tons of snow begin to slide in the beginning seconds of an avalanche.

Some of the characters are less than believable, sort of out-of-focus, and the story line seems unfinished, perhaps prepared with insufficient time, but I forgive the author on the strength of the many enjoyable hours he's given me.

This isn't Emerson's best work, but I found it well worth reading. At 308 pages it's a reasonable weekend read, or entertainment for a medium-sized airplane trip. It does become rather suspenseful toward the end -- at least in the sense that I truly wondered how Emerson would resolve such a tangled story in the few remaining pages.

If you haven't read any of Emerson's books, I would recommend several. He started out with the "Thomas Black" detective series, most of which are very good. Try Fat Tuesday or Yellow Dog Party, for instance. Of his most recent books, I thought Pyro was very good. But my weakest spot is for the "Mac Fontana" series. Black Hearts and Slow Dancing will serve as a suggestion, but you can't go wrong with any of them, in my opinion.

More information about Mr. Emerson, his books, and his personal appearances, may be seen at http://earlemerson.com/.

EL

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson

March 07 2006 (05:38:00) ( 0 views )

I am not typically a reader of non-fiction. In fact, I think I could probably count all the non-fiction books I have really read on my fingers. (This doesn't include textbooks -- that's not reading in the sense I use it here. That's work.) I actually wonder if I'd need both hands.

But in this case, I read every word, every page. I looked at every picture. I read the introduction, looked through the notes, the illustration credits, and even scanned the index. This is a fascinating book.

I've never read anything else by Bill Bryson, and to flaunt my ignorance, I'd never heard of him. My brother-in-law Mike gave us this book for Christmas. And it's a handsome gift. It's a real doorstop of a book, with a hard cover and glossy paper, measuring 8 x 10 inches and 624 pages. It has 595 beautiful illustrations, including photographs, drawings and paintings. But nothing is as important as the fact that this book held my interest as tightly as any page-turner I've ever cracked. I'm just not used to that with non-fiction.

So what is the subject matter of A Short History of Nearly Everything? Well, nearly everything. It is divided into six sections. They are:

1. Lost in the Cosmos. This is nothing less than an exposition of current theory and knowledge of the formation, composition, size, and state of the Universe in which we live. Among many other things, Bryson discusses our Solar System, the discovery of Pluto, and theories about asteroids.


2. The Size of the Earth. Who knew that in 1735 "...people had lately become infected with a powerful desire to understand the Earth ..." to the extent that a party of "scientists and adventurers" from France travelled to Peru with the idea of triangulating distances in the Andes with the ultimate goal of calculating the size of the Earth?


3. A New Age Dawns. The age of Einstein, Planck, Hubble, Neils Bohr. A time when "a graduate student ... named Clair Patterson ... using ... lead isotope measurement to try to get a definitive age for the Earth ..." discovered that the soil, air, the very rocks he was testing were unbelievably contaminated with lead -- "two hundred times the levels...expected..." which discovery lead him to understand that this was the result of adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline. Patterson embarked on "a hellish campaign" to expose the truth about this monstrous health hazard. Bryson credits him directly with the introduction of the Clean Air Act of 1970, and "the removal from sale of all leaded petrol in the United States in 1986." This fascinating story is one of many woven into the fabric of this section.


4. Dangerous Planet. The nature of our globe -- what's inside, and what's on top. What's happening to our continents, what about volcanos? Did you know that Yellowstone Park is a volcano?


5. Life Itself. Cells, DNA, Darwin. What was the "KT impact?" Dinosaurs roamed the earth much longer than we have to date. What's our life expectancy as a species?


6. The Road to Us. The mysterious biped. Hominids, the Holocene era. Anthropology, archaeology. In Chapter 29 we read that "about a million and a half years ago some forgotten genius ... took one stone and used it to shape another... it was the world's first piece of advanced technology."

There is no way I can really do this book justice here. It is, after all, about "nearly everything." On the back of the dust jacket appear the usual testimonials from critics. They are all true in this case, but the one I want to excerpt comes from Tim Flannery, Times Literary Supplement:

"...schools would be better places if it were the core science reader on the curriculum."

A Short History of Nearly Everything is filled with stories of quirky scientists, and the often ironic fates they met. It seems almost a natural law of human history (and somewhere Bryson states it as such) that the wrong person will get credit for any major discovery.

The book is stuffed with material from which one may launch hours of heavy thinking and talking. Bryson quotes Ian Tattersall in Chapter 28, "The Mysterious Biped:" "'One of the hardest ideas for humans to accept ... is that we are not the culmination of anything. There is nothing inevitable about our being here." There is much about the origin of the human race -- what is known and what is not known. And there is little to make one confident that we are here for very long.

Bryson has accomplished what is, in my mind, a very unusual feat here. This book is not chatty or condescending, it is not oversimplified, nor is Bryson less than modest about its capacity to cover the ambitious scope he's undertaken. This is a starting place, but what an accomplishment.

The only other author I've encountered that writes this type of non-fiction is John McPhee, and Bryson cites his work more than once. McPhee has written such books as Basin and Range, which takes on the subject of plate tectonics, and Coming Into the Country, a book about Alaska that I read in the 70s (I think).

We live in a time when much money and work is expended on increasing our knowledge, yet how much of that knowledge ever touches most of us? Writers like Mr. Bryson give us the opportunity to have a look into the huge body of information that humanity has accumulated, and, having seen it, we know that we know very, very little about anything. In his own words, "We enjoy not only the privilege of existence, but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even ... to make it better."

(0) Comments | Post Comment

Whiteout, by Ken Follett

February 24 2006 (21:46:00) ( 0 views )

I've read Ken Follett's novels for many years, remembering back to The Eye of the Needle, and The Key to Rebecca as two of the best thrillers ever. His writing has been quite diverse since, including such unusual yet terrific books as Pillars of the Earth and On Wings of Eagles -- the latter being a nonfiction account of Ross Perot's efforts to rescue his employees from the Iranian revolutionaries in the days following the overthrow of the Shah.

Follett has a knack for the thriller, and for the original. Both are well displayed in this novel, which is a great weekend's entertainment or just about right for a long airplane trip.

I must mention that I'm not really happy with the bio-terrorism angle of the plot in this book. It seems that both Mr. Follet's and my government have made enough hay on that theme without his help. But having said that, the plot is very well done and the book provides plenty of suspense along with sufficient character development to keep us involved.

The principal character of the book is Toni Gallo, an ex-cop now working as head of security at a medical research laboratory in Scotland. The abovementioned terrorists plan to steal a deadly virus that is stored in the lab, and the attempt is carried out during an unexpected blizzard that chokes the roads and makes every movement a challenge.

The story of how Gallo handles this situation and the other characters in her life as well is well thought out and believable.